Folic acid and hearing loss
This article was originally published in The Tan Sheet
Executive Summary
A study published in the Jan. 2 Annals of Internal Medicine finds folic acid given to older men and women with high blood homocysteine levels slowed the decline in hearing of the speech frequencies. However, the 728 men and women came from a country without folic acid fortification of food. Jane Durga, Ph.D., Cognitive Science Group, Nutrition and Health Department, Nestle Research Center, Lausanne, Switzerland, et al., found after three years thresholds of the low frequencies increased by 1 dB in the folic acid group and by 1.7 dB in the placebo group. The researchers conducted a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial from September 2000 to December 2004 in the Netherlands. The researchers say "the effect requires confirmation, especially in populations from countries with folic acid fortification programs"...